Friday, August 18, 2017

RANT: Hey NESN … So What if Aaron Judge Strikes Out A Lot?

So the New York Yankees and New York Mets executives and
front office personnel keep firing pot shots back and forth at each other which
reminds me of the good ole days of the Yankees and Red Sox rivalry. With the
Yankees making the trip to Boston this weekend for their second consecutive
weekend series head-to-head I wanted to take this opportunity on this beautiful
Friday morning to take a cheap shot of my own, not at the Boston Red Sox
themselves but at NESN.com. NESN released an article, and if you don’t know who
NESN is they are basically the Red Sox equivalent of the YES Network here in
the Bronx, stating that Aaron Judge set an “embarrassing” Major League record
on Wednesday night against the New York Mets when he struck out in a 33rd
straight game. My question is, so what? And while we are on the subject, don’t
worry I have plenty of embarrassments to talk about this morning.

First of all it seems like the crew over at NESN never
watched or paid much attention to the whole sabermetrics and Moneyball craze.
Does NESN and their writer Joshua Schrock not understand that striking out
counts just the same in the sabermetrics world as a 400 foot fly out or a ball
hit on the screws right at a positional player? Sure, if you want to get more
in-depth with it you can bring up sacrifice flies, moving runners over
etc. but in the grand scheme of things
one thing is certain in Major League Baseball… A great player is going to make
an out seven times out of ten and even the best player will make an out six
times out of every ten at-bats. Baseball is failure. What in the hell does it
matter if he’s striking out, grounding out, flying out, popping out or
whatever? The team is going to make 27 outs on any given night regardless.

Those of us who pay attention to baseball and specifically
to Yankees prospects know that Aaron Judge always battled the strikeout and
always will. Some reporters, who needs views and clicks I’d assume, are talking
about Judge’s strikeout problems like this is new news, or news at all. Judge
was never the .300 - .400 hitter he portrayed himself to be in a small sample
size in the first half and he never will be. That’s not his game. His game is
giving it all in the field and hitting mammoth home runs. Judge can’t and won’t
be something that he’s not and he shouldn’t be embarrassed for being the player
that the Yankees drafted, developed and called up to lead the youth movement
and the potential charge into the 2017 postseason.

Does NESN want to know what is embarrassing though? What is embarrassing
is having Jerry Remy rip a Japanese-born player, Masahiro Tanaka, for needing a
translator. What is embarrassing is having a blatant racist on your payroll
that will be celebrated in a pregame ceremony this season if he hasn’t been
already. I don’t know because (insert four letter word) the Red Sox. Especially
when it was okay, or nothing was said by Remy anyway, when Daisuke Matsuzaka
and Hideki Okajima (to name a few) had translators of their own. Be consistent
or stfu.